Stock
The photo discussed in this article is an almost perfect stock photo. It's not cutting edge; it's not trendy. It's not hip or cool. wshat it is is a photo that will license again and aagain for years....extending its revenue stream long after its production costs have been recouped. This is a photo with a very long tail.
In order to find a proxy for which seasonal holidays were important from a stock photography perspective, I decided to look at how many greeting cards were sent. Christmas & Valentine's Day were 1st and 2nd but I was surprised to find Mother's Day in 3rd place. This article goes into more detail about Mother's Day and also surveys stock photography search results associated with the term.
I was recently asked: "If you were shooting stock (hey, maybe you are...), would you be shooting for rights-managed, royalty-free, microstock or some combination?"
A San Francisco-based photographer recently asked: "There is a lot of speculation about tablets like the Kindle and the iPad possibly leading the way for more image use and therefore a possible boon to stock-photo licensing. Do you have any thoughts on that?"
This is an interview with Holger Mette, an Australian photographer who's been traveling the world for two years earning his living from a small portfolio of photos he distributes in the microstock market. We discuss travel, photography and microstock, with example photos and links to his microstock portfolios.
[Source:
Microstock Diaries - used with permission. All photos Copyright Holger Mette]
Photographer, Art Director and Editor Sarah Golonka shares with us her knowledge and tips on succeeding in stock photography.
In the near future, the vast majority of professional photographers will be unable to earn enough from producing stock images to offset their cost of production.
There are two ways to approach shooting for the stock photo market. The first is to take images you love and hope that someone will want to pay you for them. The more businesslike approach is to try to determine what customers want, and one thing that is beneficial is that the subject matter in demand has not changed: what customers wanted five, 10 or 20 years ago is still in demand today.
Photography should
be a revolutionary act. It should be a kick in the establishment, the
common, the mundane. It has to be an act of revolt against banality and
conformity, a powerful explosion of new ideas. It should be as violent
to the mind as a thousand thunderstorms. It should rip apart the
accepted social fabric . It should denounce, point, accuse and solve.
In one frame. It should be a declaration of war to everything we take
for granted and accept as obvious.
With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information?
Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in
order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some
other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some
effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce
good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any
economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs
as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for
paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way
to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that
advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes
that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?
"Sales of $1 images continued to generate six-figure incomes for the world's top photographers in 2009," begins the Fotolia press release that highlights the company's three top-selling images for last year. Combined, the three Fotolia top sellers gathered around 10,000 downloads, so the photographers' earnings are nowhere near as impressive as Fotolia claims; however, the images themselves offer an interesting perspective into current buyer needs.
A friend who has been on the periphery of the photo industry for decades now works for a company that manages social media and search engine optimization for a variety of clients, including law firms. She said her office mates disagree on what they are allowed to do with pictures they find on news Web sites. She asked: "Are bloggers allowed to illustrate their blog entries with photos they find on news sites, such as a photo of a sinkhole? What are the rules about using editorial images in a blog post?"
For most of iStockphoto's best-selling photographers, the number of images downloaded per month declined in 2009.
This chart provides information for 198 of the leading contributors to iStockphoto. It shows the total number of downloads each photographer had as of May 1, 2009 and the minimum and maximum number of downloads the photographer had on December 31, 2009. We were unable to report exact figures for the period May through December because iStockphoto changed its reporting policy in June to only supply a greater than number that indicated the downloads were in a certain range. Using this data and interpolating for the first four missing months in the data we were able to make an estimate of the number of downloads each photographer had in 2009.
Photographs of many products and locations can not be used for any type
of commercial purpose without a release. Blanket releases for images of
these subjects are almost impossible to obtain. It is sometimes
possible to get a release for a very specific, clearly defined use, but
not for an undefined “stock use.” Therefore, if the stock
photographer’s goal is to license rights to the images he or she
produces the photographer may be better advised to avoid wasting time
photographing this subject matter. In some cases such images may be
used for editorial purposes.
After great success at producing and selling traditional rights-managed and royalty-free imagery for more than 25 years, Ron Chapple started producing microstock in 2006. By 2008, he went looking for new opportunities, and in 2009 -- the year when many other photographers struggled to survive -- he doubled his income compared to the previous year.
For much of the past decade, textbook publishers have licensed rights to print a minimum number of copies of the books they published and proceeded to greatly exceed the authorized press run, without informing the content creators. Only recently have photographers become aware of this problem, which we covered last month. Here is a summary of the settled and pending actions.
Getty photographer Carlos Sanchez Pereyra recently asked on Linkedin what others thought was the "best way to sell stock." There is no question that Getty Images makes more gross sales than any other brand, but it may not be the best place for most photographers.
Should a photographer license his work as royalty-free (RF) for a 20%
royalty or rights-managed (RM) for a 40% to 50% royalty? The answer
seems simple, but maybe not. In a previous article I pointed out that there is absolutely no justification for a
distributor paying only a royalty of only 20% when an images is
licensed as RF and 40% when it is licensed as RM. It doesn't cost the
distributor any more to license an image as RF than as RM. In fact, if
anything, because negotiating time is involved in making some RM sales
it may actually cost the distributor more to license rights to an RM
image than to an RF one. Thus, if we were basing the royalty share
solely on the relative contributions of the distributor and the creator
to the sale, the RF royalty should be higher, not lower, than the
royalty for RM.
In January2010, pacaSearch will roll out a major marketing campaign
to picture buyers to promote its new pacaSearch software. At a recent demonstration at PictureHouse in New
York, Lee Horton, Multimedia Editor of K12 Inc. said, “Learning about
the functionality and usefulness of [pacaSearch] put a big smile on my
face. As a photo editor and art buyer, I search multiple sites daily.
This tool puts more control in my hands. I can keep the results pages
in tabs with fewer keystrokes, page toggles and site crashes. The
relative percentages, predictive text and term definitions create a
tight, clean search environment. With the launch of pacaSearch, I can
successfully and accurately find imagery in less time, with less
hassle, while having more agency resources at my fingertips. Thank you,
PACA.”
In looking ahead to 2010, photographers should focus on how they will adapt to the new realities of the photography business.
The following are some principles that apply all types of stock photo sales. The base numbers on the pricing schedules on this site are average rates for one-time, non-exclusive use of a single image by the smallest of companies, and assuming that the image has no unique factors that would make it more valuable. These numbers are equal to U.S. dollars and are reasonable rates for commercial use of the average professionally produced stock image. Other currencies should adjust accordingly. Photographer should be aware of the existence of similar microstock images that might fulfill the customer's requirements if exclusivity is not an issue for the customer. In such cases the photographer may find it necessary to negotiate a lower fee.
Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to Creative Commons licenses, which are used to allow free uses of images. However, widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that "All Rights [are] Reserved" by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.
Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images.
Textbook publishers now have total control when it comes to setting prices and have no reason to want a dialogue with sellers on the subject of pricing. However, past uses is one area where publishers might want to open a discussion, seeing the outcomes of several recent court cases.